Dartmouth's varsity soccer team edged Harvard 3-3 yesterday, handing the Crimson its first defeat of the season. The loss, and a scoreless tie at Columbia two weeks ago, severely damage Harvard's chances of repeating as Ivy League champion.

Harvard controlled the ball for better than half the game, but failed to capitalize on many excellent scoring opportunities. In the fourth period, behind by one goal, the Crimson fired six straight shots at the Dartmouth net and failed to score. Three of the shots simply missed, two were blocked by the Dartmouth goalie, and one bounced off the crossbar.

The Indians opened the scoring four minutes into the first period with a goal by Turner Paige, Godah Dasu getting the assist. Both teams tallied in the second, as Dasu scored for Dartmouth, and Harvard's sophomore center forward Jim Saltonstall slammed home his sixth goal of the season at 14:00, off a pass from inside left Hugh Polk.

Keith Chiappa evened the score for Harvard at 2:07 of the final period, after a series of passes from halfback Bob Knapp, Saltonstall, and left wing Charlie Njoku. Chiappa, ordinarily a center forward, played most of the game at inside right, filling in for Fred Akuffo, who was sidelined with a bad knee after the pre-game warm-ups.

Just three minutes after Chiappa's score, however, Paige popped in his second goal of the afternoon. It was Dartmouth's third Ivy League victory.

Harvard's Ivy record now stands at 1-1-1 and games with Princeton and Brown, reputedly the league's toughest teams, are still to come. Unless the Crimson can provide some consistent scoring to supplement Saltonstall and Chiappa (who have scored 11 goals between them) it will have serious difficulty remaining in contention.

The varsity will face an all-star Alumni team, including six former all-Ivy players, on the Business School Field at 10:30 a.m. today.